Phoenix in My Fortune (A Monster Haven Story Book 6) by R.L. Naquin Read Free Book Online Page B

to stay awake by watching an infomercial about a fancy, proprietary hair-removal system that utilized a person’s body heat to cause a chemical reaction at the root, expelling the hair permanently.
    Fun times at my house.
    While Darius was in mothman mode, he didn’t have much of a face to speak of, but his eyes glowed red. When Kam was angry, her eyes filled with flames. Seeing them stride into my house, both with bright crimson eyes, I could almost believe that mothmen and djinn had some sort of common ancestor.
    Even with my protective walls up—as they usually were at home—I felt my friends’ frustrated anger rolling off them like a bonfire.
    I eased from my comfortable position curled against Riley and rose from the couch. “What happened?”
    Kam took a deep breath, held it, then blew it out. “Bullshit happened.”
    Darius nodded in agreement. “Bullshit.” He shifted his left shoulder, and the dusty wing on that side settled into place.
    Mom made her way over to him and placed her hand in his. “Tell us what happened, sweetheart.”
    At her touch, the glow in his eyes grew less sharp and piercing. “There isn’t much to tell.”
    Kam flopped into the vacated chair. “We spent hours searching every inch of the beach and surrounding hills.”
    Sara brushed her silver hair from her face. “I’m guessing you didn’t find anything.”
    “Not a thing,” Kam said.
    I frowned. “That doesn’t explain why you’re both so angry. Something happened.”
    Kam kicked her shoes off and curled her legs under herself. “Not upset. Frustrated. Irritated. Out of nowhere, a bunch of cops show up, flashlights bobbing up and down the beach, yelling back and forth.”
    Fear made a knot in my stomach. “They were after you?”
    “They were after somebody else, but they damn near got me instead. If Darius hadn’t flown down and grabbed me, I’d have been right in their path.”
    Maurice stepped out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel. “So, who were they after in the middle of the night?”
    “Not far from where Kam had been standing, they found a guy sleeping in the brush.”
    “Human?” I held my breath, worried that a Hidden had been captured by humans. Or that the police had caught Shadow Man and were probably in danger.
    “Yes,” Darius said. “Human. They’ve arrested him for the kidnapping of the six kids. We listened for a while and found out the man was recently released from prison, but they didn’t say what for. Even without proof of the kidnapping, sleeping on the beach is a violation of his parole, so they had reason enough to take him in.”
    We were all silent while we thought about it. I knew Shadow Man was behind the kidnapping, as well as the setup of the homeless guy. “It couldn’t have been my imagination,” I said. “You guys saw him on the news, too, right?”
    “Of course. We all saw it.” Sara opened the laptop and did a search for the photo we’d seen on television. She enlarged it to fit the screen and gasped.
    “What?” I hurried over to look and gasped, too.
    He was gone. There was no trace of Shadow Man on the cliff. It was as if he’d never been there at all.
    * * *
    The news broke early the next morning.
    Oliver Hayes—previously incarcerated for smuggling exotic pets into the country—was in custody for the kidnapping of the six school children found in an eight-foot-deep hole two days earlier at Stinson Beach. Police detectives had followed an anonymous tip and found the man less than a quarter of a mile from the site of the kidnapping. The investigation was still underway, but Hayes had several items hidden in his pockets that likely belonged to the missing children. Including a handful of gingerbread crumbs.
    I felt ill. “Why the hell would an exotic pet smuggler kidnap a bunch of kids? In what world do they think that makes sense?”
    I knew it wasn’t true, but what proof did I have? I’d seen Shadow Man twice—once with my own eyes, and once in